Skip to main content

John Paulson in Bloomberg Markets

Hot on the heels of our post on Jim Chanos' NY Mag profile, we bring you this latest hedgie report: a lengthy Bloomberg Markets Magazine profile of uber-successful hedge fund manager John Paulson.

You may remember John Paulson from such posts as, "John Paulson buys mortgage securities", and, "Seasoned investors search for values".

But today, he'll be starring in Bloomberg Markets' latest feature, "The Richest Hedge Funds: John Paulson Strikes Again". Here's an excerpt:

"There's not a lot of light in Paulson & Co.'s 28th- floor headquarters on a drizzly November afternoon. The Alexander Calder sculpture and multicolored prints have been shipped to the firm's new offices six blocks south. Darkness envelops the New York skyline.

The Dow Industrials have lost a total of 929 points over two days, and the jobless rate is poised to hit 6.5 percent. And John Paulson, who oversees $36 billion in hedge fund assets, isn't exactly Mr. Sunshine either.

"You have deterioration in almost every asset class," Paulson says. "You're looking at declines in housing prices, the health of manufacturers and the earnings of various companies. There are rising delinquencies in auto loans and commercial real estate."

Paulson, 52, peers over his tortoiseshell glasses. "There's more to come," he warns.

Paulson doesn't smile as he says this, even though with each new calamity his bottom line grows. Paulson & Co. funds generated profits of more than $3 billion for the firm in 2007, mostly by betting the housing bubble, swollen with subprime mortgages, would burst."


Read on for more about Paulson & Co.'s successful investment strategies, and see how their 2008 performance stacked up against other big name hedge funds, and the industry as a whole.

Popular posts from this blog

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Moneyball: How the Red Sox Win Championships

Welcome, readers . T o get the first look at brand new posts (like the following piece) and to receive our exclusive email list updates, please subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter .   The Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series title of t he 21st century this we ek. Having won their first Se ries in 86 years back in 200 4, the last decade-plus has marked a very strong return to form for one of baseball's oldest big league clubs. So how did they do it? Quick background: in late 2002, team own er and hedge fund manager, John W. Henry (with his partners ) bought the Boston Red Sox and its historic Fenway Park for a reported sum of $ 695 million. Henry and Co. quickly set out to find their ideal General Manager (GM) to help turn around their newly acquired, ailing ship. This brings us to one of my fav orite scenes from the 2011 film , Moneyball , in which John W. Henry (played by Ar liss Howard) attempts to woo Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pi